There is a rhythm in everything. All our attempts to understand systems are, in a way, attempts to experience the rhythm through which they change and develop.

Nothing exists in isolation. A system must, as Ilya Prigogine pointed out, be  ‘open’ to its environment, which it exchanges matter and energy – for example, a local ecosystem is part of the earth system – and this enables it to build its structures.

Once you’ve managed to build a structure which is stable, that’s pleasing and reassuring … but only up to a point, because if your system becomes too stable, it will be ossified and die. 

Forest ecosystem

Hence the importance of criticality, the capacity to access, when required, the creative edge of chaos. This makes it possible to undertake phase transition: once you’ve exhausted the potential of one phase, you must be bold enough to embark on a new one.

To tell the story of a system’s history is therefore a bit like scripting a TV drama series across several episodes: each episode follows a similar pattern (tension-resolution etc.), so in this sense our series is cyclical and repetitive.

But there’s an overall story-arc … and, crucially, not a deterministic one. Each episode is similar in structure, different in content!

For this reason, development tends to proceed through waves or cycles … moving from order, through disorder, then back to a new order.

For a natural ecology – e.g. a forest ecosystem – this was nicely depicted by C.S. Holling: each cycle comprises four episodes, “exploitation, conservation, release and reorganisation”.

Beginnings of imperialism

In a similar way, human systems have historically built their structures, nourishing these through a relationship of exchange with the wider earth-system, and developing through cycles.

What about capitalism? Its relationship to the environment is peculiar, because the structures it builds are fuelled by depleting it, thus undermining the basis of future development.

Hence, the periodic regeneration of nature – highlighted in Holling’s cycles – is blocked by the regeneration – reproduction – of capitalism.

Capitalism is nonetheless a real system, so it shouldn’t surprise us to encounter a cyclical pattern. 

In particular, since roughly the beginnings of imperialism (around 1900), several commentators have identified ‘long cycles’ – each lasting maybe three decades or so).

Social exploitation

Attempts to classify these are somewhat scholastic, and we needn’t enter into details, but the ‘wave’ theories developed in the 1920s by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev provide a good example.

I was fascinated to notice that, like Holling, Kondratiev divides each wave into four parts: “recovery, prosperity, recession, depression”.

While this terminology differs from Holling’s, the basic idea is surely similar: systems flourish, then get stuck, break apart and eventually regenerate.  Joseph Schumpeter’s term ‘creative destruction’ strikingly captures this.

But of course what’s being ‘destroyed’ is not merely the structures of the previous phase, but the environment itself.  Capitalist phase-transitions are funded by an unrestricted degradation of energy/materials and ejection of waste; each successive cycle simply found new ways of doing this.

The structures fuelled by environmental degradation also serve to degrade society … this, I would say, is a clue to the deep connection between ecological and social exploitation.

Deeper re-alignment

To correct the technological determinism of some ‘wave’ theories,  I earlier explored  the following representation.

Here, the ‘high’ episodes are ones where the system runs smoothly (good for capitalism but bad for the environment!); the down phases are ones of crisis … when both environment and society somehow assert their resistance:

That diagram was drawn up three years ago, but a lot has changed since. So, in the continuum of cycles, where do we stand today?

A new cycle fuelled (like previous ones) from environmental destruction would be unthinkable. So there’s an argument that we are approaching a new, green Kondratiev .

But this fudges the key question: can it be a form of capitalism? Lovins and others believed so, but  I would rather say the new phase must signify a deeper re-alignment of human society, a kind of ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism itself.

Death throes

The fuelling for this would no longer be environmental degradation, but rather the free energies unleashed by human creativity and social networks, as we explore the vocabulary of a new, sustainable exchange with the ecosystem.

Nonetheless, precursors of a post-capitalist order would necessarily emerge while the old one is still in place … and may in many cases initially occur under the guise of adjustments within capitalism.

Let’s consider one key parameter of a green future: energy. As Prigogine and Isabel Stengers say, systems approaching phase change “seem to ‘hesitate’ among various possible directions of evolution …”.

And indeed our system has seemed, very recently, to oscillate in its attitude to energy.

When oil prices are high this is conducive to renewables, whereas when they are low, this dis-incentivises the costly and dodgy techniques (fracking, tarsands) invented to stave off peak oil. This has lead Fred Pearce to remark: “Maybe we are seeing the death throes of our addiction to fossil fuels”.

Movement of communities

Could this fluctuation resolve itself into a post-carbon order? Arguably, 2015 marked a turning point, and since then, the renewables transition may have acquired an intrinsic momentum, which no longer depends upon policy intervention (i.e. Trump can’t stop it).

While this is encouraging, I would still say an explicit critique of capitalism is needed. Otherwise we’d lose the window of opportunity to push for a more profound phase-change.

The impetus for this must come from a deep mobilisation of society, which can’t happen if the vast majority is marginalised. So we must find a way to ensure that the renewables transition directly contributes to social equity.

For example, in California , the solar transition creates many jobs – even in some instances strengthening trade unionism – while revenues from renewables can be invested in communities which historically suffered environmental degradation.

At the same time, it’s important to treat solar not just in a top-down, technocentric way, but as a movement of communities. 

This was already demonstrated in an interesting project in India, the Barefoot College, which has spread its influence globally, notably by inspiring similar projects in London.

These are examples of what’s beginning to be spoken of as ‘just transition’.  The concept is important. But crucially, environmental justice is not about being charitably ‘kind’ to deprived communities: it’s about recognising and respecting them as the driving force for radical phase-change.

This Author

Dr Robert Biel teaches political ecology at University College London and is the author of The New Imperialism and The Entropy of Capitalism. He specialises in international political economy, systems theory, sustainable development and urban agriculture.

There is a rhythm in everything. All our attempts to understand systems are, in a way, attempts to experience the rhythm through which they change and develop.

Nothing exists in isolation. A system must, as Ilya Prigogine pointed out, be  ‘open’ to its environment, which it exchanges matter and energy – for example, a local ecosystem is part of the earth system – and this enables it to build its structures.

Once you’ve managed to build a structure which is stable, that’s pleasing and reassuring … but only up to a point, because if your system becomes too stable, it will be ossified and die. 

Forest ecosystem

Hence the importance of criticality, the capacity to access, when required, the creative edge of chaos. This makes it possible to undertake phase transition: once you’ve exhausted the potential of one phase, you must be bold enough to embark on a new one.

To tell the story of a system’s history is therefore a bit like scripting a TV drama series across several episodes: each episode follows a similar pattern (tension-resolution etc.), so in this sense our series is cyclical and repetitive.

But there’s an overall story-arc … and, crucially, not a deterministic one. Each episode is similar in structure, different in content!

For this reason, development tends to proceed through waves or cycles … moving from order, through disorder, then back to a new order.

For a natural ecology – e.g. a forest ecosystem – this was nicely depicted by C.S. Holling: each cycle comprises four episodes, “exploitation, conservation, release and reorganisation”.

Beginnings of imperialism

In a similar way, human systems have historically built their structures, nourishing these through a relationship of exchange with the wider earth-system, and developing through cycles.

What about capitalism? Its relationship to the environment is peculiar, because the structures it builds are fuelled by depleting it, thus undermining the basis of future development.

Hence, the periodic regeneration of nature – highlighted in Holling’s cycles – is blocked by the regeneration – reproduction – of capitalism.

Capitalism is nonetheless a real system, so it shouldn’t surprise us to encounter a cyclical pattern. 

In particular, since roughly the beginnings of imperialism (around 1900), several commentators have identified ‘long cycles’ – each lasting maybe three decades or so).

Social exploitation

Attempts to classify these are somewhat scholastic, and we needn’t enter into details, but the ‘wave’ theories developed in the 1920s by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev provide a good example.

I was fascinated to notice that, like Holling, Kondratiev divides each wave into four parts: “recovery, prosperity, recession, depression”.

While this terminology differs from Holling’s, the basic idea is surely similar: systems flourish, then get stuck, break apart and eventually regenerate.  Joseph Schumpeter’s term ‘creative destruction’ strikingly captures this.

But of course what’s being ‘destroyed’ is not merely the structures of the previous phase, but the environment itself.  Capitalist phase-transitions are funded by an unrestricted degradation of energy/materials and ejection of waste; each successive cycle simply found new ways of doing this.

The structures fuelled by environmental degradation also serve to degrade society … this, I would say, is a clue to the deep connection between ecological and social exploitation.

Deeper re-alignment

To correct the technological determinism of some ‘wave’ theories,  I earlier explored  the following representation.

Here, the ‘high’ episodes are ones where the system runs smoothly (good for capitalism but bad for the environment!); the down phases are ones of crisis … when both environment and society somehow assert their resistance:

That diagram was drawn up three years ago, but a lot has changed since. So, in the continuum of cycles, where do we stand today?

A new cycle fuelled (like previous ones) from environmental destruction would be unthinkable. So there’s an argument that we are approaching a new, green Kondratiev .

But this fudges the key question: can it be a form of capitalism? Lovins and others believed so, but  I would rather say the new phase must signify a deeper re-alignment of human society, a kind of ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism itself.

Death throes

The fuelling for this would no longer be environmental degradation, but rather the free energies unleashed by human creativity and social networks, as we explore the vocabulary of a new, sustainable exchange with the ecosystem.

Nonetheless, precursors of a post-capitalist order would necessarily emerge while the old one is still in place … and may in many cases initially occur under the guise of adjustments within capitalism.

Let’s consider one key parameter of a green future: energy. As Prigogine and Isabel Stengers say, systems approaching phase change “seem to ‘hesitate’ among various possible directions of evolution …”.

And indeed our system has seemed, very recently, to oscillate in its attitude to energy.

When oil prices are high this is conducive to renewables, whereas when they are low, this dis-incentivises the costly and dodgy techniques (fracking, tarsands) invented to stave off peak oil. This has lead Fred Pearce to remark: “Maybe we are seeing the death throes of our addiction to fossil fuels”.

Movement of communities

Could this fluctuation resolve itself into a post-carbon order? Arguably, 2015 marked a turning point, and since then, the renewables transition may have acquired an intrinsic momentum, which no longer depends upon policy intervention (i.e. Trump can’t stop it).

While this is encouraging, I would still say an explicit critique of capitalism is needed. Otherwise we’d lose the window of opportunity to push for a more profound phase-change.

The impetus for this must come from a deep mobilisation of society, which can’t happen if the vast majority is marginalised. So we must find a way to ensure that the renewables transition directly contributes to social equity.

For example, in California , the solar transition creates many jobs – even in some instances strengthening trade unionism – while revenues from renewables can be invested in communities which historically suffered environmental degradation.

At the same time, it’s important to treat solar not just in a top-down, technocentric way, but as a movement of communities. 

This was already demonstrated in an interesting project in India, the Barefoot College, which has spread its influence globally, notably by inspiring similar projects in London.

These are examples of what’s beginning to be spoken of as ‘just transition’.  The concept is important. But crucially, environmental justice is not about being charitably ‘kind’ to deprived communities: it’s about recognising and respecting them as the driving force for radical phase-change.

This Author

Dr Robert Biel teaches political ecology at University College London and is the author of The New Imperialism and The Entropy of Capitalism. He specialises in international political economy, systems theory, sustainable development and urban agriculture.

There is a rhythm in everything. All our attempts to understand systems are, in a way, attempts to experience the rhythm through which they change and develop.

Nothing exists in isolation. A system must, as Ilya Prigogine pointed out, be  ‘open’ to its environment, which it exchanges matter and energy – for example, a local ecosystem is part of the earth system – and this enables it to build its structures.

Once you’ve managed to build a structure which is stable, that’s pleasing and reassuring … but only up to a point, because if your system becomes too stable, it will be ossified and die. 

Forest ecosystem

Hence the importance of criticality, the capacity to access, when required, the creative edge of chaos. This makes it possible to undertake phase transition: once you’ve exhausted the potential of one phase, you must be bold enough to embark on a new one.

To tell the story of a system’s history is therefore a bit like scripting a TV drama series across several episodes: each episode follows a similar pattern (tension-resolution etc.), so in this sense our series is cyclical and repetitive.

But there’s an overall story-arc … and, crucially, not a deterministic one. Each episode is similar in structure, different in content!

For this reason, development tends to proceed through waves or cycles … moving from order, through disorder, then back to a new order.

For a natural ecology – e.g. a forest ecosystem – this was nicely depicted by C.S. Holling: each cycle comprises four episodes, “exploitation, conservation, release and reorganisation”.

Beginnings of imperialism

In a similar way, human systems have historically built their structures, nourishing these through a relationship of exchange with the wider earth-system, and developing through cycles.

What about capitalism? Its relationship to the environment is peculiar, because the structures it builds are fuelled by depleting it, thus undermining the basis of future development.

Hence, the periodic regeneration of nature – highlighted in Holling’s cycles – is blocked by the regeneration – reproduction – of capitalism.

Capitalism is nonetheless a real system, so it shouldn’t surprise us to encounter a cyclical pattern. 

In particular, since roughly the beginnings of imperialism (around 1900), several commentators have identified ‘long cycles’ – each lasting maybe three decades or so).

Social exploitation

Attempts to classify these are somewhat scholastic, and we needn’t enter into details, but the ‘wave’ theories developed in the 1920s by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev provide a good example.

I was fascinated to notice that, like Holling, Kondratiev divides each wave into four parts: “recovery, prosperity, recession, depression”.

While this terminology differs from Holling’s, the basic idea is surely similar: systems flourish, then get stuck, break apart and eventually regenerate.  Joseph Schumpeter’s term ‘creative destruction’ strikingly captures this.

But of course what’s being ‘destroyed’ is not merely the structures of the previous phase, but the environment itself.  Capitalist phase-transitions are funded by an unrestricted degradation of energy/materials and ejection of waste; each successive cycle simply found new ways of doing this.

The structures fuelled by environmental degradation also serve to degrade society … this, I would say, is a clue to the deep connection between ecological and social exploitation.

Deeper re-alignment

To correct the technological determinism of some ‘wave’ theories,  I earlier explored  the following representation.

Here, the ‘high’ episodes are ones where the system runs smoothly (good for capitalism but bad for the environment!); the down phases are ones of crisis … when both environment and society somehow assert their resistance:

That diagram was drawn up three years ago, but a lot has changed since. So, in the continuum of cycles, where do we stand today?

A new cycle fuelled (like previous ones) from environmental destruction would be unthinkable. So there’s an argument that we are approaching a new, green Kondratiev .

But this fudges the key question: can it be a form of capitalism? Lovins and others believed so, but  I would rather say the new phase must signify a deeper re-alignment of human society, a kind of ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism itself.

Death throes

The fuelling for this would no longer be environmental degradation, but rather the free energies unleashed by human creativity and social networks, as we explore the vocabulary of a new, sustainable exchange with the ecosystem.

Nonetheless, precursors of a post-capitalist order would necessarily emerge while the old one is still in place … and may in many cases initially occur under the guise of adjustments within capitalism.

Let’s consider one key parameter of a green future: energy. As Prigogine and Isabel Stengers say, systems approaching phase change “seem to ‘hesitate’ among various possible directions of evolution …”.

And indeed our system has seemed, very recently, to oscillate in its attitude to energy.

When oil prices are high this is conducive to renewables, whereas when they are low, this dis-incentivises the costly and dodgy techniques (fracking, tarsands) invented to stave off peak oil. This has lead Fred Pearce to remark: “Maybe we are seeing the death throes of our addiction to fossil fuels”.

Movement of communities

Could this fluctuation resolve itself into a post-carbon order? Arguably, 2015 marked a turning point, and since then, the renewables transition may have acquired an intrinsic momentum, which no longer depends upon policy intervention (i.e. Trump can’t stop it).

While this is encouraging, I would still say an explicit critique of capitalism is needed. Otherwise we’d lose the window of opportunity to push for a more profound phase-change.

The impetus for this must come from a deep mobilisation of society, which can’t happen if the vast majority is marginalised. So we must find a way to ensure that the renewables transition directly contributes to social equity.

For example, in California , the solar transition creates many jobs – even in some instances strengthening trade unionism – while revenues from renewables can be invested in communities which historically suffered environmental degradation.

At the same time, it’s important to treat solar not just in a top-down, technocentric way, but as a movement of communities. 

This was already demonstrated in an interesting project in India, the Barefoot College, which has spread its influence globally, notably by inspiring similar projects in London.

These are examples of what’s beginning to be spoken of as ‘just transition’.  The concept is important. But crucially, environmental justice is not about being charitably ‘kind’ to deprived communities: it’s about recognising and respecting them as the driving force for radical phase-change.

This Author

Dr Robert Biel teaches political ecology at University College London and is the author of The New Imperialism and The Entropy of Capitalism. He specialises in international political economy, systems theory, sustainable development and urban agriculture.

There is a rhythm in everything. All our attempts to understand systems are, in a way, attempts to experience the rhythm through which they change and develop.

Nothing exists in isolation. A system must, as Ilya Prigogine pointed out, be  ‘open’ to its environment, which it exchanges matter and energy – for example, a local ecosystem is part of the earth system – and this enables it to build its structures.

Once you’ve managed to build a structure which is stable, that’s pleasing and reassuring … but only up to a point, because if your system becomes too stable, it will be ossified and die. 

Forest ecosystem

Hence the importance of criticality, the capacity to access, when required, the creative edge of chaos. This makes it possible to undertake phase transition: once you’ve exhausted the potential of one phase, you must be bold enough to embark on a new one.

To tell the story of a system’s history is therefore a bit like scripting a TV drama series across several episodes: each episode follows a similar pattern (tension-resolution etc.), so in this sense our series is cyclical and repetitive.

But there’s an overall story-arc … and, crucially, not a deterministic one. Each episode is similar in structure, different in content!

For this reason, development tends to proceed through waves or cycles … moving from order, through disorder, then back to a new order.

For a natural ecology – e.g. a forest ecosystem – this was nicely depicted by C.S. Holling: each cycle comprises four episodes, “exploitation, conservation, release and reorganisation”.

Beginnings of imperialism

In a similar way, human systems have historically built their structures, nourishing these through a relationship of exchange with the wider earth-system, and developing through cycles.

What about capitalism? Its relationship to the environment is peculiar, because the structures it builds are fuelled by depleting it, thus undermining the basis of future development.

Hence, the periodic regeneration of nature – highlighted in Holling’s cycles – is blocked by the regeneration – reproduction – of capitalism.

Capitalism is nonetheless a real system, so it shouldn’t surprise us to encounter a cyclical pattern. 

In particular, since roughly the beginnings of imperialism (around 1900), several commentators have identified ‘long cycles’ – each lasting maybe three decades or so).

Social exploitation

Attempts to classify these are somewhat scholastic, and we needn’t enter into details, but the ‘wave’ theories developed in the 1920s by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev provide a good example.

I was fascinated to notice that, like Holling, Kondratiev divides each wave into four parts: “recovery, prosperity, recession, depression”.

While this terminology differs from Holling’s, the basic idea is surely similar: systems flourish, then get stuck, break apart and eventually regenerate.  Joseph Schumpeter’s term ‘creative destruction’ strikingly captures this.

But of course what’s being ‘destroyed’ is not merely the structures of the previous phase, but the environment itself.  Capitalist phase-transitions are funded by an unrestricted degradation of energy/materials and ejection of waste; each successive cycle simply found new ways of doing this.

The structures fuelled by environmental degradation also serve to degrade society … this, I would say, is a clue to the deep connection between ecological and social exploitation.

Deeper re-alignment

To correct the technological determinism of some ‘wave’ theories,  I earlier explored  the following representation.

Here, the ‘high’ episodes are ones where the system runs smoothly (good for capitalism but bad for the environment!); the down phases are ones of crisis … when both environment and society somehow assert their resistance:

That diagram was drawn up three years ago, but a lot has changed since. So, in the continuum of cycles, where do we stand today?

A new cycle fuelled (like previous ones) from environmental destruction would be unthinkable. So there’s an argument that we are approaching a new, green Kondratiev .

But this fudges the key question: can it be a form of capitalism? Lovins and others believed so, but  I would rather say the new phase must signify a deeper re-alignment of human society, a kind of ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism itself.

Death throes

The fuelling for this would no longer be environmental degradation, but rather the free energies unleashed by human creativity and social networks, as we explore the vocabulary of a new, sustainable exchange with the ecosystem.

Nonetheless, precursors of a post-capitalist order would necessarily emerge while the old one is still in place … and may in many cases initially occur under the guise of adjustments within capitalism.

Let’s consider one key parameter of a green future: energy. As Prigogine and Isabel Stengers say, systems approaching phase change “seem to ‘hesitate’ among various possible directions of evolution …”.

And indeed our system has seemed, very recently, to oscillate in its attitude to energy.

When oil prices are high this is conducive to renewables, whereas when they are low, this dis-incentivises the costly and dodgy techniques (fracking, tarsands) invented to stave off peak oil. This has lead Fred Pearce to remark: “Maybe we are seeing the death throes of our addiction to fossil fuels”.

Movement of communities

Could this fluctuation resolve itself into a post-carbon order? Arguably, 2015 marked a turning point, and since then, the renewables transition may have acquired an intrinsic momentum, which no longer depends upon policy intervention (i.e. Trump can’t stop it).

While this is encouraging, I would still say an explicit critique of capitalism is needed. Otherwise we’d lose the window of opportunity to push for a more profound phase-change.

The impetus for this must come from a deep mobilisation of society, which can’t happen if the vast majority is marginalised. So we must find a way to ensure that the renewables transition directly contributes to social equity.

For example, in California , the solar transition creates many jobs – even in some instances strengthening trade unionism – while revenues from renewables can be invested in communities which historically suffered environmental degradation.

At the same time, it’s important to treat solar not just in a top-down, technocentric way, but as a movement of communities. 

This was already demonstrated in an interesting project in India, the Barefoot College, which has spread its influence globally, notably by inspiring similar projects in London.

These are examples of what’s beginning to be spoken of as ‘just transition’.  The concept is important. But crucially, environmental justice is not about being charitably ‘kind’ to deprived communities: it’s about recognising and respecting them as the driving force for radical phase-change.

This Author

Dr Robert Biel teaches political ecology at University College London and is the author of The New Imperialism and The Entropy of Capitalism. He specialises in international political economy, systems theory, sustainable development and urban agriculture.

There is a rhythm in everything. All our attempts to understand systems are, in a way, attempts to experience the rhythm through which they change and develop.

Nothing exists in isolation. A system must, as Ilya Prigogine pointed out, be  ‘open’ to its environment, which it exchanges matter and energy – for example, a local ecosystem is part of the earth system – and this enables it to build its structures.

Once you’ve managed to build a structure which is stable, that’s pleasing and reassuring … but only up to a point, because if your system becomes too stable, it will be ossified and die. 

Forest ecosystem

Hence the importance of criticality, the capacity to access, when required, the creative edge of chaos. This makes it possible to undertake phase transition: once you’ve exhausted the potential of one phase, you must be bold enough to embark on a new one.

To tell the story of a system’s history is therefore a bit like scripting a TV drama series across several episodes: each episode follows a similar pattern (tension-resolution etc.), so in this sense our series is cyclical and repetitive.

But there’s an overall story-arc … and, crucially, not a deterministic one. Each episode is similar in structure, different in content!

For this reason, development tends to proceed through waves or cycles … moving from order, through disorder, then back to a new order.

For a natural ecology – e.g. a forest ecosystem – this was nicely depicted by C.S. Holling: each cycle comprises four episodes, “exploitation, conservation, release and reorganisation”.

Beginnings of imperialism

In a similar way, human systems have historically built their structures, nourishing these through a relationship of exchange with the wider earth-system, and developing through cycles.

What about capitalism? Its relationship to the environment is peculiar, because the structures it builds are fuelled by depleting it, thus undermining the basis of future development.

Hence, the periodic regeneration of nature – highlighted in Holling’s cycles – is blocked by the regeneration – reproduction – of capitalism.

Capitalism is nonetheless a real system, so it shouldn’t surprise us to encounter a cyclical pattern. 

In particular, since roughly the beginnings of imperialism (around 1900), several commentators have identified ‘long cycles’ – each lasting maybe three decades or so).

Social exploitation

Attempts to classify these are somewhat scholastic, and we needn’t enter into details, but the ‘wave’ theories developed in the 1920s by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev provide a good example.

I was fascinated to notice that, like Holling, Kondratiev divides each wave into four parts: “recovery, prosperity, recession, depression”.

While this terminology differs from Holling’s, the basic idea is surely similar: systems flourish, then get stuck, break apart and eventually regenerate.  Joseph Schumpeter’s term ‘creative destruction’ strikingly captures this.

But of course what’s being ‘destroyed’ is not merely the structures of the previous phase, but the environment itself.  Capitalist phase-transitions are funded by an unrestricted degradation of energy/materials and ejection of waste; each successive cycle simply found new ways of doing this.

The structures fuelled by environmental degradation also serve to degrade society … this, I would say, is a clue to the deep connection between ecological and social exploitation.

Deeper re-alignment

To correct the technological determinism of some ‘wave’ theories,  I earlier explored  the following representation.

Here, the ‘high’ episodes are ones where the system runs smoothly (good for capitalism but bad for the environment!); the down phases are ones of crisis … when both environment and society somehow assert their resistance:

That diagram was drawn up three years ago, but a lot has changed since. So, in the continuum of cycles, where do we stand today?

A new cycle fuelled (like previous ones) from environmental destruction would be unthinkable. So there’s an argument that we are approaching a new, green Kondratiev .

But this fudges the key question: can it be a form of capitalism? Lovins and others believed so, but  I would rather say the new phase must signify a deeper re-alignment of human society, a kind of ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism itself.

Death throes

The fuelling for this would no longer be environmental degradation, but rather the free energies unleashed by human creativity and social networks, as we explore the vocabulary of a new, sustainable exchange with the ecosystem.

Nonetheless, precursors of a post-capitalist order would necessarily emerge while the old one is still in place … and may in many cases initially occur under the guise of adjustments within capitalism.

Let’s consider one key parameter of a green future: energy. As Prigogine and Isabel Stengers say, systems approaching phase change “seem to ‘hesitate’ among various possible directions of evolution …”.

And indeed our system has seemed, very recently, to oscillate in its attitude to energy.

When oil prices are high this is conducive to renewables, whereas when they are low, this dis-incentivises the costly and dodgy techniques (fracking, tarsands) invented to stave off peak oil. This has lead Fred Pearce to remark: “Maybe we are seeing the death throes of our addiction to fossil fuels”.

Movement of communities

Could this fluctuation resolve itself into a post-carbon order? Arguably, 2015 marked a turning point, and since then, the renewables transition may have acquired an intrinsic momentum, which no longer depends upon policy intervention (i.e. Trump can’t stop it).

While this is encouraging, I would still say an explicit critique of capitalism is needed. Otherwise we’d lose the window of opportunity to push for a more profound phase-change.

The impetus for this must come from a deep mobilisation of society, which can’t happen if the vast majority is marginalised. So we must find a way to ensure that the renewables transition directly contributes to social equity.

For example, in California , the solar transition creates many jobs – even in some instances strengthening trade unionism – while revenues from renewables can be invested in communities which historically suffered environmental degradation.

At the same time, it’s important to treat solar not just in a top-down, technocentric way, but as a movement of communities. 

This was already demonstrated in an interesting project in India, the Barefoot College, which has spread its influence globally, notably by inspiring similar projects in London.

These are examples of what’s beginning to be spoken of as ‘just transition’.  The concept is important. But crucially, environmental justice is not about being charitably ‘kind’ to deprived communities: it’s about recognising and respecting them as the driving force for radical phase-change.

This Author

Dr Robert Biel teaches political ecology at University College London and is the author of The New Imperialism and The Entropy of Capitalism. He specialises in international political economy, systems theory, sustainable development and urban agriculture.

There is a rhythm in everything. All our attempts to understand systems are, in a way, attempts to experience the rhythm through which they change and develop.

Nothing exists in isolation. A system must, as Ilya Prigogine pointed out, be  ‘open’ to its environment, which it exchanges matter and energy – for example, a local ecosystem is part of the earth system – and this enables it to build its structures.

Once you’ve managed to build a structure which is stable, that’s pleasing and reassuring … but only up to a point, because if your system becomes too stable, it will be ossified and die. 

Forest ecosystem

Hence the importance of criticality, the capacity to access, when required, the creative edge of chaos. This makes it possible to undertake phase transition: once you’ve exhausted the potential of one phase, you must be bold enough to embark on a new one.

To tell the story of a system’s history is therefore a bit like scripting a TV drama series across several episodes: each episode follows a similar pattern (tension-resolution etc.), so in this sense our series is cyclical and repetitive.

But there’s an overall story-arc … and, crucially, not a deterministic one. Each episode is similar in structure, different in content!

For this reason, development tends to proceed through waves or cycles … moving from order, through disorder, then back to a new order.

For a natural ecology – e.g. a forest ecosystem – this was nicely depicted by C.S. Holling: each cycle comprises four episodes, “exploitation, conservation, release and reorganisation”.

Beginnings of imperialism

In a similar way, human systems have historically built their structures, nourishing these through a relationship of exchange with the wider earth-system, and developing through cycles.

What about capitalism? Its relationship to the environment is peculiar, because the structures it builds are fuelled by depleting it, thus undermining the basis of future development.

Hence, the periodic regeneration of nature – highlighted in Holling’s cycles – is blocked by the regeneration – reproduction – of capitalism.

Capitalism is nonetheless a real system, so it shouldn’t surprise us to encounter a cyclical pattern. 

In particular, since roughly the beginnings of imperialism (around 1900), several commentators have identified ‘long cycles’ – each lasting maybe three decades or so).

Social exploitation

Attempts to classify these are somewhat scholastic, and we needn’t enter into details, but the ‘wave’ theories developed in the 1920s by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev provide a good example.

I was fascinated to notice that, like Holling, Kondratiev divides each wave into four parts: “recovery, prosperity, recession, depression”.

While this terminology differs from Holling’s, the basic idea is surely similar: systems flourish, then get stuck, break apart and eventually regenerate.  Joseph Schumpeter’s term ‘creative destruction’ strikingly captures this.

But of course what’s being ‘destroyed’ is not merely the structures of the previous phase, but the environment itself.  Capitalist phase-transitions are funded by an unrestricted degradation of energy/materials and ejection of waste; each successive cycle simply found new ways of doing this.

The structures fuelled by environmental degradation also serve to degrade society … this, I would say, is a clue to the deep connection between ecological and social exploitation.

Deeper re-alignment

To correct the technological determinism of some ‘wave’ theories,  I earlier explored  the following representation.

Here, the ‘high’ episodes are ones where the system runs smoothly (good for capitalism but bad for the environment!); the down phases are ones of crisis … when both environment and society somehow assert their resistance:

That diagram was drawn up three years ago, but a lot has changed since. So, in the continuum of cycles, where do we stand today?

A new cycle fuelled (like previous ones) from environmental destruction would be unthinkable. So there’s an argument that we are approaching a new, green Kondratiev .

But this fudges the key question: can it be a form of capitalism? Lovins and others believed so, but  I would rather say the new phase must signify a deeper re-alignment of human society, a kind of ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism itself.

Death throes

The fuelling for this would no longer be environmental degradation, but rather the free energies unleashed by human creativity and social networks, as we explore the vocabulary of a new, sustainable exchange with the ecosystem.

Nonetheless, precursors of a post-capitalist order would necessarily emerge while the old one is still in place … and may in many cases initially occur under the guise of adjustments within capitalism.

Let’s consider one key parameter of a green future: energy. As Prigogine and Isabel Stengers say, systems approaching phase change “seem to ‘hesitate’ among various possible directions of evolution …”.

And indeed our system has seemed, very recently, to oscillate in its attitude to energy.

When oil prices are high this is conducive to renewables, whereas when they are low, this dis-incentivises the costly and dodgy techniques (fracking, tarsands) invented to stave off peak oil. This has lead Fred Pearce to remark: “Maybe we are seeing the death throes of our addiction to fossil fuels”.

Movement of communities

Could this fluctuation resolve itself into a post-carbon order? Arguably, 2015 marked a turning point, and since then, the renewables transition may have acquired an intrinsic momentum, which no longer depends upon policy intervention (i.e. Trump can’t stop it).

While this is encouraging, I would still say an explicit critique of capitalism is needed. Otherwise we’d lose the window of opportunity to push for a more profound phase-change.

The impetus for this must come from a deep mobilisation of society, which can’t happen if the vast majority is marginalised. So we must find a way to ensure that the renewables transition directly contributes to social equity.

For example, in California , the solar transition creates many jobs – even in some instances strengthening trade unionism – while revenues from renewables can be invested in communities which historically suffered environmental degradation.

At the same time, it’s important to treat solar not just in a top-down, technocentric way, but as a movement of communities. 

This was already demonstrated in an interesting project in India, the Barefoot College, which has spread its influence globally, notably by inspiring similar projects in London.

These are examples of what’s beginning to be spoken of as ‘just transition’.  The concept is important. But crucially, environmental justice is not about being charitably ‘kind’ to deprived communities: it’s about recognising and respecting them as the driving force for radical phase-change.

This Author

Dr Robert Biel teaches political ecology at University College London and is the author of The New Imperialism and The Entropy of Capitalism. He specialises in international political economy, systems theory, sustainable development and urban agriculture.

Donald Trump has finally come to the UK – 20 months after he won the election to make him the 45th President of the United States.

During that time, a trans-Atlantic network of business people, think tank analysts, and lobbyists have grown in influence — pushing a free market ideology and spreading climate science denial on both sides of the Atlantic.

DeSmog UK first mapped the network when Trump was sworn into office in January 2016. Things have moved on a bit since then.

On the eve of the President’s UK visit, over 100 scientists signed a letter urging Theresa May to challenge Donald Trump’s climate science denial. To mark the occasion, DeSmog UK has updated the network map, showing all the key connections between the actors in the shadows pushing to lighten environmental regulations and dampen corporate accountability in the US and UK:

From Trump to the UK

Donald Trump is famously keen to appoint climate science deniers and fossil fuel lobbyists to head up the US’s main environmental regulator, the Environmental Protection Agency.

First there was Scott Pruitt, a lawyer funded by the fossil fuel industry that was fond of trying to stop the EPA’s clean power plan in the courts. After Pruitt resigned in the wake of multiple allegations of inappropriate use of EPA funds, Trump appointed another coal lobbyist to replace him — Andrew Wheeler. He was a staffer of climate science denying US Senator Jim Inhofe. Inhofe once held up a snowball in Congress to try and disprove global warming.

Inhofe has taken campaign contributions from the Koch brothers — who have spent more than $88 million backing groups spreading climate science denial, according to Greenpeace estimates. Trump’s 2016 presidential bid was belatedly backed by the Kochs, but Trump mainly drew funds from Rebekah Mercer and Robert Mercer. The Mercer Family Foundation spent at least $3,824,000 between 2003 and 2010 directly funding groups opposing climate change action.

The Mercers and the Kochs fund a number of organisations that tie Trump and his administration to the climate science denial and Brexit lobbying in the UK, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute, The Heritage Foundation, the CATO Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and Americans for Prosperity.

Trans-Atlantic Conduits

These groups use a number of actors as conduits to spread their money, resources and ideas into the UK.

One organisation that rapidly grew in influence after the Brexit referendum was the Legatum Institute. OpenDemocracy revealed how Legatum got privileged access to UK government ministers, with all the links and meetings mapped by DeSmog UK.

Legatum hired two US lobbyists with ties to climate science denial organisations — Alden Abbott and Shanker Singham. Abbott authored a report for the Heartland Institute, and was a Deputy Director at The Heritage Foundation, while Singham was a policy expert for the US-based Heartland Institute.

Singham is often credited with working inside government to push for a Hard Brexit. Singham had begun advising PR and lobbying firm Grayling about Brexit, Open Democracy revealed. This was a problem, as Singham was a member of International Trade Secretary and arch-Leaver Liam Fox’s trade advisory team. Singham said there is no conflict of interest, but stepped down from his trade advisory role anyway.

The controversy saw Singham shuffled out of Legatum. He now works for the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has strong ties to organisations based in a building that acts as an incubator for climate science denial and deregulatory ideas in the UK— 55 Tufton Street.

One resident, the Taxpayers’ Alliance, was set up by Matthew Elliott, now a Senior Advisor at Legatum. Elliot was Chief of the Brexit campaign group Vote Leave. He recently visited the US to work on the US-UK trade deal, alongside Singham.

Elliott is married to Sarah Smith, chair of right-wing lobby group Republicans Overseas UK. Smith used to work as a Major Gifts Officer for Americans for Prosperity, a Koch brothers lobby group.

There are other links, beyond Legatum.

Myron Ebell, a Director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a member of Trump’s transition team, is an ally of the UK’s premier climate science denial campaign group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

Ebell spoke at an event organised by the GWPF in January 2017. At the event, he said he considered the “climate industrial complex”, which included everyone from climate campaigners to publicly funded scientists, as one of the “most dangerous” threats to society.

When asked where he got his information on climate change, if not from experts or scientists, Ebell said he was “very skeptical of expert opinion when it becomes group-think and experts gang up against public”. He pointed to Brexit as another example of the public rejecting expert opinion. When asked what special interests he was representing, he replied “freedom”.

And then there are Arron Banks and Nigel Farage, famously photographed in a golden elevator with Donald Trump in November 2016.

Farage, former leader of UKIP and the Leave.EU campaign group, has spoken at The Heritage Foundation. One of Brexit’s main funders, Banks has also been invited to Heritage Foundation events, as well as speaking at the CATO Institute — both of which promote climate science denial and rampant free-market capitalism.

Tory Politicans and the UK Government

All of these conduits are significantly involved with pro-Brexit groups, which have the backing of numerous Tory politicians and cabinet members.

For instance, Leave Means Leave, a group campaigning for a hard Brexit, had new Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab on its political advisory board.

Leave Means Leave was also supported by some of the UK’s most prominent climate science deniers such as former Tory MP and now Lord Peter Lilley, and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MP Sammy Wilson. It was also supported by libertarian Tories calling for deregulations which have previously pushed disinformation on climate change including Jacob Rees-Mogg, John Redwood, Christopher Chope and Ian Paisley Jr, to name a few.

Former environment secretary Owen Paterson is also a member of the group. Paterson and Lilley are both affiliated with the GWPF, and Paterson delivered a speech to the Competitive Enterprise Institute in October 2017.

Raab was also co-founder of Change Britain, which was set up by members of Vote Leave after the referendum. Change Britain’s patron is Lord Charles Guthrie, a former Field Marshal, who has been implicated in deals to buy Siberian gold alongside Arron Banks.

Raab is not the only cabinet member with strong links to the US. Just weeks after his appointment as International Trade Secretary, Liam Fox met with over a dozen Heritage Foundation members – including its president and former Tea Partier Jim DeMint and several individuals who became part of the Trump administration. Fox’s former special advisor when he was Defence Secretary, Luke Coffey, now works for the Heritage Foundation.

Fox was also the founder of Atlantic Bridge, a neoconservative thinktank aiming to promote a “special relationship” between the UK and United States. In 2007, the group established a partnership with free-market lobby group the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), known for producing template pieces of legislation that reduce protections for the environment and other anti-regulation efforts. Atlantic Bridge operated until September 2011 when it was dissolved following a Charity Commission investigation.

A key funder of Atlantic Bridge was Michael Hintze, the billionaire hedge fund manager, Conservative party donor, philanthropist, and supporter of the climate science denying GWPF. Hintze also donated money to former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson for his campaign to be London Mayor.

While not a pro-Brexit cabinet member, new Home Secretary Matt Hancock has also accepted cash from a key donor to the climate science denying GWPF. He has received £18,000 in donations from businessman Neil Record over the past four years.

Johnson’s Brexit co-conspirator and now Environment Secretary Michael Gove was also involved with Atlantic Bridge, and sits on the Advisory Committee of another 55 Tufton Street outfit, the New Culture Forum.

Gove, Fox and Johnson are all Brexit figureheads, and all recently held meetings with Singham and Legatum.

With so many connections between the Brexit and Trump camps, the President’s visit this week may feel more like a homecoming.

This Article

This article first appeared at Desmog.uk 

Wine production in Europe has fallen to 50-year lows due to the impacts of extreme weather events that include hail, frost, drought and rot. No one knows this better than Adrian Bridge, CEO of the Fladgate Partnership, a company that owns some of the biggest names in port including Taylor, Croft and Fonseca. 

Inviting former President Barack Obama to Porto was undoubtedly intended to make heads turn. Obama’s administration was instrumental in bringing the Paris Accord into being, but here in Porto he acknowledged that “the targets set by the Paris Accord are not enough to avoid catastrophe.”

Obama talked extensively about the linkages between extreme weather impacts and migration, and how these ultimately connect to conflict. His overall message echoed that of the Porto Protocol: the only way to solve this crisis is to work together.

Financial resources

Adrian Bridge is keen to promote the need for action and sharing of ideas that can reduce losses that are already threatening many businesses.

Making the point that we need solutions, he stated that his “company … had a vineyard completely wiped out in a single hour, after we had this hail storm at the end of May… we had 12 percent annual rainfall in one hour.

“That event cost our business about €400,000 by the time you count all the erosion, infiltration, damage to buildings and so on and so forth.”

In wine regions such as Burgundy, cannons firing silver iodide into storm clouds have been put in place to convert the crop-destroying hailstones into rain. To work, this requires an integrated response between different farmers and a commitment in terms of land and resources. 

Is it worth it? Bridge says, “Running a system of seeding clouds costs a whole lot less than [€400,000]. As a big company, we can do it. Smaller farmers alongside us who don’t have the financial resources would benefit… well great! That is great!”

Rising temperatures

Adrian Bridge is a determined character with a great deal of success in the wine trade. His attitude is geared to action and cooperation reaching beyond his own business to other industries where experience and learning can be shared.

He says, “Instead of thinking in silos of wine industry and wine solutions, hopefully, we can learn from other industries and we can be a platform that gets lots of people to join from various different industries.”

Obama echoed this sentiment of cooperation stating, “..adaptation is going to be required for winemakers, for example, to share best practices in terms of how they can sustain their industry in the face of rising temperatures.” 

Obama continued, “But I think it would also be important for the industries that are being effected to publicise the impacts that a changing climate already has. Because one of the challenges in the climate change debate has always been, that… it is not an immediate catastrophe.”

“What businesses can do is to start putting a figure in terms of the losses that are current, or, the expenses required for adaptation. Because that information already exists, it’s just no one does it.”

New measurement

“The reason that it is important to start attaching a price to losses, or expenses to adapting to a warmer climate, is because one of the main arguments against doing something about climate change is that it is going to cost too much, or it is going to have an impact on our economic competitiveness.”

“Now, if you can say, ‘ah listen, in Miami, we are in the middle of a beautiful sunny day’ and you start to see floods because the ocean is literally coming up through the ground, two feet high in residential neighbourhoods.

“If that is going to cost, eventually 20 billion or 100 billion or half a trillion dollars of property damage, then why would we not spend 50 billion dollars to start implementing more clean energy strategies?

“You then get it cost-benefit analyses to support change. That, I think, is something that is very important.”

Also speaking at Climate Change Leadership summit was top UN diplomat and Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova: “There is a new kind of index, a new measurement, which is called the Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) for UNESCO World Heritage sites to be established.” 

Common memory

Bokova highlighted how the CVI would list the most vulnerable sites around the world, many include vineyards like Champagne or the Douro, but also places such as Venice, and how the preservation of these sites is a way of protecting our cultural identities and culture. 

Bokova cautioned against complacency at this point in time: “This is the scariest part of global warming, the fact that we won’t be able to undo the damage done.

“That we won’t be able to extricate Venice or New Orleans from the sea. Their disappearance will be a net loss, regardless of what mountainside civilisations will someday rise.”

“We must take very serious measures because climate is not only destroying our livelihoods, our economies, the lives of future generations. It is not only causing conflict, migration and wars. We know that populations move because of climate, destruction, desertification, loss of water resources.”

“The worst part, of course, I speak from the point of view of UNESCO and the World Heritage, is that climate will just make our common history disappear, our common memory and at the end of the day, our diverse identities.”

Do more!

This one-day event in Porto brought together world-class speakers and an audience curious to learn more about climate change. The issue still remains, how do we move from being a talk-shop to a do-shop?

In March 2019 the Porto Protocol will move into what Bridge believes is the do-phase. A two-day conference where solution providers and stakeholders from the wine industry and many others will converge into a rich exchange of ideas focussed on overcoming the future challenges of climate change.

On a hot evening at Taylor’s Port Cellars on the banks of the Douro, Adrian Bridge, says exactly what every CEO around the world should be saying: 

“The point is to do more tomorrow than you are doing today. So if you haven’t started to change your business to help mitigate climate change, it is time to start and start now! If you are already doing a lot, do more!”

This Author

Nick Breeze has been interviewing a wide range of people in both climate change and the wine industry for over a decade. He is currently part of a new initiative at wine-weather.com and writes for SecretSommelier.com and envisionation.co.uk. He can be followed on Twitter at @NickGBreeze.

We are facing deep-rooted climate, social and environmental crises. The current dominant economic system cannot provide solutions. It is time for system change.

For Friends of the Earth International this means creating societies based on peoples’ sovereignty and environmental, social, economic and gender justice. We must question and deconstruct the capitalist logic of accumulation.

The climate catastrophe is interwoven with many social and environmental crises, including oppression, corporate power, hunger, water depletion, biodiversity loss and deforestation.

Equality and reciprocity

At its heart sits an unsustainable economic system, the sole aim of which is endless growth and profit. This system concentrates wealth, power and obscene privilege with the few.

Corporations and national elites are empowered by that very system to exploit people and their livelihoods with impunity.

We must tackle climate change and the associated social and environmental crises by taking rapid and bold action to address the common root causes; privatisation, financialisation and commodification of nature and societies, and unsustainable production and consumption systems.

The magnitude of the crises we face demands system change.

That system change will result in the creation of sustainable societies and new relations between human beings, and between human beings and nature, based on equality and reciprocity.

Expansion of capital

But we cannot create these societies and assert people’s rights without increasing people’s power. We need to reclaim politics.

This means creating genuine, radical and just democracies centred around people’s sovereignty and participation.

International law must put people above corporate profit, ensuring binding rules for business and mechanisms that guarantee access to justice for victims of transnational corporations.

System change calls for an articulation of the struggles against oppression; that is, patriarchy, racism, colonialism, and class and capitalist exploitation.

It demands commitment to the struggle against the exploitation of women’s bodies and work. We are witnessing how the expansion of capital over the territories leads to increased violence against women alongside the violation of their rights.

Economic justice

Gender justice will only be possible when we recognise women as political subjects, stop violence against women, strengthen women’s autonomy, advance the principles of feminist economy, deconstruct the sexual division of labor and reorganize care work.

A transformation of the energy system is fundamental to system change. It entails democratic answers to the fundamental questions: for whom and what is energy produced? And a total departure from fossil fuel reliance and corporate control.

This must be a just transition, founded on workers’ and community rights. It is not only about changing technologies and renewable energy, but about public and community ownership and control, therefore addressing the root problems of a system that turns energy into a commodity and denies the right to energy for all.

It requires equity and justice, especially for those already impacted by the changing climate in the global South.

Genuine system change would radically transform the food system towards food sovereignty and agroecology: valuing local knowledge, promoting social and economic justice and people’s control over their territories, guaranteeing the right to land, water and seeds, nurturing social relations founded on justice and solidarity, and recognising the fundamental role of women in food production, to provide an effective way to feed the world and a counter to destructive industrial agriculture.

Popular mobilisation

System change must address people’s individual and collective needs and promote reciprocity, redistribution and sharing.

Solutions include public services achieved through tax justice, social ownership and co-operativism, local markets and fair trade, community forest management, and valuing the wellbeing of people and the planet.

People all over the world are already living or implementing thousands of initiatives which embody justice and challenge the capitalist logic. Now we must expand them.

And that requires commensurate international and national public policies that empower people to fight for a democratic state that ensures rights and provides environmentally and socially just public services, and active popular participation; a state that guarantees peoples’ rights to water, land and the territories, food, health, education, housing and decent jobs.

We all need to support local and international resistance, engage in popular mobilisation, strive for policy change and upscale the real solutions, the solutions of the people. This is system change.

This Author

Karin Nansen is Chair of Friends of the Earth International, the world’s largest grassroots environmental federation, and a founding member of REDES / Friends of the Earth Uruguay.

Wine production in Europe has fallen to 50-year lows due to the impacts of extreme weather events that include hail, frost, drought and rot. No one knows this better than Adrian Bridge, CEO of the Fladgate Partnership, a company that owns some of the biggest names in port including Taylor, Croft and Fonseca. 

Inviting former President Barack Obama to Porto was undoubtedly intended to make heads turn. Obama’s administration was instrumental in bringing the Paris Accord into being, but here in Porto he acknowledged that “the targets set by the Paris Accord are not enough to avoid catastrophe.”

Obama talked extensively about the linkages between extreme weather impacts and migration, and how these ultimately connect to conflict. His overall message echoed that of the Porto Protocol: the only way to solve this crisis is to work together.

Financial resources

Adrian Bridge is keen to promote the need for action and sharing of ideas that can reduce losses that are already threatening many businesses.

Making the point that we need solutions, he stated that his “company … had a vineyard completely wiped out in a single hour, after we had this hail storm at the end of May… we had 12 percent annual rainfall in one hour.

“That event cost our business about €400,000 by the time you count all the erosion, infiltration, damage to buildings and so on and so forth.”

In wine regions such as Burgundy, cannons firing silver iodide into storm clouds have been put in place to convert the crop-destroying hailstones into rain. To work, this requires an integrated response between different farmers and a commitment in terms of land and resources. 

Is it worth it? Bridge says, “Running a system of seeding clouds costs a whole lot less than [€400,000]. As a big company, we can do it. Smaller farmers alongside us who don’t have the financial resources would benefit… well great! That is great!”

Rising temperatures

Adrian Bridge is a determined character with a great deal of success in the wine trade. His attitude is geared to action and cooperation reaching beyond his own business to other industries where experience and learning can be shared.

He says, “Instead of thinking in silos of wine industry and wine solutions, hopefully, we can learn from other industries and we can be a platform that gets lots of people to join from various different industries.”

Obama echoed this sentiment of cooperation stating, “..adaptation is going to be required for winemakers, for example, to share best practices in terms of how they can sustain their industry in the face of rising temperatures.” 

Obama continued, “But I think it would also be important for the industries that are being effected to publicise the impacts that a changing climate already has. Because one of the challenges in the climate change debate has always been, that… it is not an immediate catastrophe.”

“What businesses can do is to start putting a figure in terms of the losses that are current, or, the expenses required for adaptation. Because that information already exists, it’s just no one does it.”

New measurement

“The reason that it is important to start attaching a price to losses, or expenses to adapting to a warmer climate, is because one of the main arguments against doing something about climate change is that it is going to cost too much, or it is going to have an impact on our economic competitiveness.”

“Now, if you can say, ‘ah listen, in Miami, we are in the middle of a beautiful sunny day’ and you start to see floods because the ocean is literally coming up through the ground, two feet high in residential neighbourhoods.

“If that is going to cost, eventually 20 billion or 100 billion or half a trillion dollars of property damage, then why would we not spend 50 billion dollars to start implementing more clean energy strategies?

“You then get it cost-benefit analyses to support change. That, I think, is something that is very important.”

Also speaking at Climate Change Leadership summit was top UN diplomat and Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova: “There is a new kind of index, a new measurement, which is called the Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) for UNESCO World Heritage sites to be established.” 

Common memory

Bokova highlighted how the CVI would list the most vulnerable sites around the world, many include vineyards like Champagne or the Douro, but also places such as Venice, and how the preservation of these sites is a way of protecting our cultural identities and culture. 

Bokova cautioned against complacency at this point in time: “This is the scariest part of global warming, the fact that we won’t be able to undo the damage done.

“That we won’t be able to extricate Venice or New Orleans from the sea. Their disappearance will be a net loss, regardless of what mountainside civilisations will someday rise.”

“We must take very serious measures because climate is not only destroying our livelihoods, our economies, the lives of future generations. It is not only causing conflict, migration and wars. We know that populations move because of climate, destruction, desertification, loss of water resources.”

“The worst part, of course, I speak from the point of view of UNESCO and the World Heritage, is that climate will just make our common history disappear, our common memory and at the end of the day, our diverse identities.”

Do more!

This one-day event in Porto brought together world-class speakers and an audience curious to learn more about climate change. The issue still remains, how do we move from being a talk-shop to a do-shop?

In March 2019 the Porto Protocol will move into what Bridge believes is the do-phase. A two-day conference where solution providers and stakeholders from the wine industry and many others will converge into a rich exchange of ideas focussed on overcoming the future challenges of climate change.

On a hot evening at Taylor’s Port Cellars on the banks of the Douro, Adrian Bridge, says exactly what every CEO around the world should be saying: 

“The point is to do more tomorrow than you are doing today. So if you haven’t started to change your business to help mitigate climate change, it is time to start and start now! If you are already doing a lot, do more!”

This Author

Nick Breeze has been interviewing a wide range of people in both climate change and the wine industry for over a decade. He is currently part of a new initiative at wine-weather.com and writes for SecretSommelier.com and envisionation.co.uk. He can be followed on Twitter at @NickGBreeze.